ThrustSSC, Thrust SSC or Thrust supersonic car is a British jet car developed by Richard Noble, Glynne Bowsher, Ron Ayers, and Jeremy Bliss. Thrust SSC holds the world land speed record, set on 15 October 1997, when it achieved a speed of and became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier. Both Thrust SSC and Thrust2 are displayed at the Coventry Transport Museum in Coventry, England. As part of the Museum's redevelopment project, both cars were relocated by specialist haulier from their position in the Museum's Spirit of Speed Gallery to the new Biffa Award Land Speed Record Gallery which opened in 2015. The car is long and wide and weighs nearly 10 tons. It had a total thrust of 223 kN, equivalent to around 102,000 brake horsepower at the measured record speed.
Details
The car was driven by Royal Air Force fighter pilot Wing CommanderAndy Green in the Black Rock Desert in the state of Nevada. It was powered by two afterburningRolls-Royce Speyturbofan engines, as used in the British version of the F-4 Phantom II jet fighter. The twin engines developed a net thrust of 223 kN, giving a power output of roughly 102,000 bhp at the measured record speed of 341 metres per second, burning around 18 litres/second of fuel. Transformed into the usual terms for car mileages based on this speed, the fuel consumption was about. The thermal power released by burning 18 litres/second of aviation fuel is approximately 630 MW which means the vehicle was operating at around 12% efficiency at its record speed, efficiency being the useful working power divided by the thermal power. The record run in October 1997 was preceded by extensive test runs of the vehicle in autumn 1996 and spring 1997 in the Al-Jafr desert in Jordan, a location unknown before for its capabilities as a test range for high speed land vehicles, with numerous advantages compared to the salt deserts of the Western United States. After the record was set, the World Motor Sport Council released the following message: The complete run history is available.
Legacy
In 1983 Richard Noble had broken the world land speed record with his earlier car Thrust2, which reached a speed of 1,019 km/h. The date of Andy Green's record came exactly a half century and one day afterChuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in Earth's atmosphere, with the Bell X-1 research rocket plane on 14 October 1947. Both Thrust SSC and Thrust2 are displayed at the Coventry Transport Museum in Coventry, England. Visitors can ride a 4D motion simulator depicting a computer-generated animation of the record-breaking run from the perspective of Green. Several teams are competing to break the record, including the Bloodhound SSC project, launched in 2008, and the North American Eagle Project, launched in 2004.
Richard Noble–Orange-Intel dispute
In June 2012, a television advertisement for the OrangeSan Diego mobile phone, containing an Intel processor, was broadcast on British television and featured a fast car in computer generated imagery. Richard Noble claimed that the car was a representation of Thrust SSC and thus these companies had used his intellectual property without permission, putting the future of the Bloodhound SSC project in doubt. The Advertising Standards Authority rejected the Bloodhound team's complaint, claiming that intellectual property disputes were not in its remit. According to BBC News technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, Intel and Orange responded that their production team had researched different styles of "superfast vehicles" and developed their own Orange-branded land speed car, and that the advertisement and phone were not connected to Noble or Bloodhound SSC.
